Newsletter No.389
19th December 2013

My Favourite Tipples - Features Blog - Subscription - About

Survey on News and Beyond Aggregation

As 2013 wraps up, we publish the latest results of our Annual Survey of News Needs & Preferences - a project I eagerly anticipate working on each autumn.

Read about the key findings here, including the percentage of respondents actively seeking alternative solutions, increasing interest in streaming technologies to pull in a broader definition of news, and other variables that are sure to have a deep influence on purchasing decisions in the coming year.

You can also read the concluding comments from Andrew Grave, the producer of the FreePint Topic Series: Beyond Aggregation, describing the reviews, articles and webinars provided through this series. If you haven't yet requested your free copy of the FreePint Report: Buyer's Guide on News Content, published in this series, register here to receive it.

Coming in 2014

The topic of news aggregation will be the centrepiece of in-person Community of Practice sessions we're hosting in London, New York, Chicago and Minneapolis in the first two months of 2014.

Thank you for your enthusiastic response to our initial announcement of these sessions - if we haven't already planned a location near you, please contact me directly at robin.neidorf@freepint.com to discuss your needs.

We're also making progress on research and commissioning articles and reports for FreePint Topic Series for 2014 on:

• The social enterprise
• Mobile security
• International copyright
• Publisher business models and pricing.

If you have suggestions for articles, product reviews or other content you think we should cover in FreePint, please share them via our online contact form.

Happy New Year!

Thank you for making FreePint part of your professional reading in 2013, and we hope you like the updated the format of the newsletter, which reflects our continuing effort to streamline and simplify the structure of FreePint.

If your organisation doesn't yet have a FreePint Subscription, I encourage you to unlock the benefits for 2014 by taking a look at the Subscription Articles, Reports and Communities of Practice and ordering a FreePint Subscription by completing the form, "How can FreePint help?".

A very Happy New Year to you from all at FreePint.

Robin Neidorf
Director of Research, FreePint
robin.neidorf@freepint.com

Read online »

My Favourite Tipples

By Liz Hawkes

Running a research team for a global law firm brings a fresh challenge every day, from requests for assistance with client work that spans over several weeks to urgent queries that have to be done in say, oh, the next five minutes. Add in to that mix current awareness work, updates, monitoring, news alerts and training programmes for trainees, summer students, interns, plus inductions for new starters and it makes for a busy and varied working day. Here are my favourite tipples that are currently helping me through.

• Marine Traffic: Some of the work for our shipping group involves tracking vessels, which we mostly do from commercial databases. This site, though, will show you ship positions at any time, anywhere in the world. I was once even able to locate a couple of barges on inland waterways in the Netherlands. Brings out my inner ship-spotting schoolboy self!
  
  
• Worldwide Registries: More often than not our company research involves companies which are set up offshore and in locations favoured for ship registries. We may just need a registered office address, or we may have to try and prove a relationship between companies. Where to begin? This list of overseas registries from Companies House is a great starting point.
  
  
• Wayback Machine: Lawyers often need to consult older official documents and I don't know if this is just me, but I'm finding these more difficult to locate on gov.uk. Have old consultation papers just dropped into a big black hole? One solution that works is to use the Wayback Machine to get to former departmental pages to pick up past papers.
  
  
• WatchThatPage: We do a lot of monitoring, tracking progress of cases, news of when legislation might come into force and don't always have the luxury of staff checking websites daily. I'm always on the look out for software that can do this job for me, and this is one service I'm currently testing.
  
  
• Invisible Woman: My Wednesdays would not be complete without a read of the Invisible Woman blog. We all know middle-aged women would make great thieves or spies because of their invisibility but this writer is encouraging us to develop our own sense of style, regardless of what's currently in the high street. Feisty and very personal, this is my over-the-hump treat.

Read online »

Would you like to submit your Favourite Tipples suggestions to the FreePint Newsletter?

Features Blog

The Features Blog offers the latest commentary on trends, issues and opportunities in the information world, as well as examples of how organisations use FreePint resources to raise the value of information.

Selection of the latest Features Blog items:

• InfoNgen: Tailored Discovery & Distribution
• Sixth Annual News Needs & Preferences Survey Shows Change in Attitudes
• IngentaConnect: Content & Compliance Resources in One Portal
• Concluding the FreePint Topic Series: Beyond Aggregation
• FreePint, Free Range: Live Events this Winter
• Input from the FreePint Sounding Board

  Visit the Features Blog »
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FreePint Subscription

Articles and reports included in a FreePint Subscription provide customer organisations with practical insight on four FreePint Topics:
Sources, Technology, ROI and Compliance.

Subscribers can click any link to login and view the full item. 

Recent FreePint Subscription articles and reports:

• Product Review of Euromonitor Passport: Value & Sources
  By Sophie Alexander on Tuesday, 17th December 2013
  With market research a strategic investment for companies of all sizes, the second part of Sophie Alexander's review of Euromonitor's Passport examines the value that the strategic intelligence tool can bring to companies. Clients range from a small ice cream manufacturer that used the data to increase its sales by 5% a year to larger companies and government organisations; 90% of clients renew every year. The resources are extensive, encompassing official sources complemented by the network of Euromonitor analysts based around the world who offer unique insights. »
  Posted in: Information purchasing - Competitive intelligence - Market sources - Regional sources
  
  
• Product Review of Eikon: Customer Support, Pricing & Contact Details
  By Andrew Grave on Tuesday, 17th December 2013
  The final part of Andrew Grave's review Eikon, explores the customer support options and pricing of this market analysis and trading software from Thomson Reuters. He finds that Eikon possesses some extremely comprehensive support pages and sets a high standard for content, ease of use and having everything in one place. Various pricing options are available, from a per-seat to corporate basis. »
  Posted in: Financial sources - Market sources - Mobile - News sources
  
  
• Product Review of InfoNgen: Executive Summary
  By Yulia Aspinall on Tuesday, 17th December 2013
  A discovery engine for competitive information professionals in fields such as finance, legal, pharmaceutical and retail, InfoNgen is an invaluable tool for workflow automation, finds Yulia Aspinall in her executive summary. Acting as a news aggregator or listening platform, InfoNgen can save researchers time by aggregating and indexing internal and external information and automatically tagging it with metadata. Tools to share and re-publish content are included, with the ability to create custom newsletters as one output choice. Cutting down on tedious manual processes allows researchers more time for analysis of information. »
  Posted in: Knowledge management - Information purchasing - Competitive intelligence - Regional sources - Search - FreePint Reports: Product Reviews
  
  
• FreePint Report: Product Review of InfoNgen
  Yulia Aspinall reviews InfoNgen, a "discovery engine" which combines the ability to do metasearches of all or selected internal and external sources of information with flexible tagging and customer specific needs. The foundation of InfoNgen is an automated classification system that analyses unstruc ... »
  Posted in: Knowledge management - Information purchasing - Competitive intelligence - Regional sources - Search - FreePint Reports: Product Reviews
  
  
• Product Review of Eikon: Customisation, Special Software Functionality
  By Andrew Grave on Monday, 16th December 2013
  The special software functionality and customisation options are put to the test in the fourth part of Andrew Grave's review of Eikon from Thomson Reuters. He finds the mobile applications an area where Eikon performs particularly well. He's also impressed by the functionality in Eikon Messenger, particularly since its involvement in the Markit Collaboration Systems network of secure messaging. This works not just across Eikon users but also with banks including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Barclays, Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs. »
  Posted in: Financial sources - Market sources - Mobile
  
  
• Communities of Practice - Acting as a Trusted Adviser
  By Sarah Dillingham on Monday, 16th December 2013
  Sarah Dillingham examines how knowledge and information professionals can support the organisation in realising the best value from their communities by encouraging and supporting Communities of Practice. She highlights some sample templates, guides and examples and points to case studies from organisations including Cap Gemini, Fluor and Xerox. »
  Posted in: Information services management - Knowledge management
  
  
• Product Review of InfoNgen: Special Software Functionality, Help, Pricing & Contact Details
  By Yulia Aspinall on Monday, 16th December 2013
  The InfoNgen solution appears to tick many of the boxes desired by information professionals in an ideal search engine - straightforward installation and access, fast filtering of reliable internal and external sources of information, de-duplication of results, and delivery of relevant content via email, alert, RSS or newsletter, finds Yulia Aspinall in the concluding part of her review. She also looks at the customer support and pricing options. »
  Posted in: Competitive intelligence - Financial sources - News sources - Search
  
  
• FreePint Report: Survey on News Needs & Preferences 2013
  FreePint's Sixth Annual News Needs & Preferences Survey quizzes information managers as to their organisation's needs and preferences around news content. Robin Neidorf introduces the results which provide a data-driven view into the concerns of information managers as they consider significant chang ... »
  Posted in: Information purchasing - Media monitoring - News sources - Subscription management - FreePint Reports: Product Reviews
  
  
• Product Review of Eikon: Search & Outputs
  By Andrew Grave on Friday, 13th December 2013
  There are several ways to search Eikon's global content covering the pricing of financial instruments, economics, news and analysis. In the third part of his review, Andrew Grave introduces the different search options and is particularly impressed with Eikon Answers, which is designed to be easy to use and he finds marks a significant leap forward in the functionality of business intelligence tools. The alerting feature is comprehensive; it offers alerts in a variety of formats and can search news in up to 32 languages. »
  Posted in: Information purchasing - Financial sources - News sources - Regional sources
  
  
• Product Review of Euromonitor Passport: Introduction, Audience and FreePint's View
  By Sophie Alexander on Friday, 13th December 2013
  Euromonitor Passport, an online market research tool which focuses on statistics and analysis in relation to consumer-based products, is subjected to Sophie Alexander's scrutiny. The first part of the review introduces the product which monitors industry trends and offers strategic analysis, market size and share information for 28 industries throughout the world. Clients use it for reasons from market entry to risk analysis, competitor profiling and sales prospecting. FreePint's View finds its global industry sector coverage very comprehensive. »
  Posted in: Competitive intelligence - Industry sources - Market sources - Regional sources
  
  
• Mini Review: IngentaConnect
  By Yulia Aspinall on Friday, 13th December 2013
  IngentaConnect offers content from over 30,000 journals and 4.5 million articles in academic fields such as engineering, library science, social sciences, medicine, science (STM) and technology. In her Mini Review of the portal, described as "the world's largest resource for scholarly publications", Yulia Aspinall highlights one of IngentaConnect's most useful aspects: the technology to support digital compliance which allows users and institutions to comply with various complex and technical industry guidelines on both publication accessibility and citation linking standards. »
  Posted in: Information purchasing - Copyright - Industry sources - Scientific, technical, medical sources - FreePint Reports: Product Reviews
  
  
• Product Review of Eikon: Sources, Content & Coverage
  By Andrew Grave on Thursday, 12th December 2013
  Eikon has a wealth of global content covering the pricing of financial instruments, economics, news and analysis, finds Andrew Grave in the second part of his review of Eikon. He provides an overview of the sources, which include specialist agriculture forecasts, energy alerts, company forecast data, information on liquid credits and corporate bonds. Content is available in 47 languages and Eikon offers profiles for 108 countries and regions. »
  Posted in: Financial sources - News sources - Regional sources
  
  
• Is LinkedIn Making News More Relevant?
  By James Mullan on Thursday, 12th December 2013
  Earlier this year FreePint wrote about how LinkedIn had acquired Pulse, an RSS news aggregator, for $90 million. At the time it wasn't entirely clear what LinkedIn's intentions were, but a recent post on the official LinkedIn blog has made it clear what the LinkedIn and Pulse integration really means. James Mullan explains how Pulse can now offer a personalised news experience with improved mobile functionality. »
  Posted in: Collaborative and social tools - Content management - News sources
  
  
• Product Review of InfoNgen: Technology & Delivery Platform; User Interface
  By Yulia Aspinall on Thursday, 12th December 2013
  The technology which underpins discovery engine InfoNgen is discussed in the third part of Yulia Aspinall's review. InfoNgen is also known as a news aggregation system; its workflow automation can eliminate a huge amount of the "heavy lifting" of manually searching through multiple sources, reading them, cutting/pasting/emailing, aggregating them together, formatting, and publishing, and hence save researchers time and make their work more effective and productive. Export options include custom newsletters which can be delivered manually or automatically via email or RSS feed. »
  Posted in: Competitive intelligence - Search - Workflow tools
  
  
• Product Review of Eikon: Introduction, Value and FreePint's View
  By Andrew Grave on Wednesday, 11th December 2013
  The first part of Andrew Grave's review of Eikon from Thomson Reuters introduces the product which covers pricing data, financial research including analyst/broker reports, global financial news and commentary, fundamentals analysis, financial estimates and charting. He finds the market analysis and trading software offers efficiency over other systems through its ease of use, workplace tools, messaging, mobile functionality and more. »
  Posted in: Information purchasing - Financial sources - News sources
  
  
• Source Update December 2013: What's Happening with Factiva?
  By Anne Jordan on Wednesday, 11th December 2013
  This month's additions and takedowns in Factiva, researched and compiled by Anne Jordan. »
  Posted in: News sources - Regional sources
  
  
• Product Review of InfoNgen: Sources, Content & Coverage; Products
  By Yulia Aspinall on Tuesday, 10th December 2013
  The second part of Yulia Aspinall's review of discovery engine InfoNgen examines the sources, content and coverage which can be aggregated. These range from traditional newspapers to blogs and social media, subscription databases, customer-specific resources and private companies. Tagging and translation capabilities cover eight languages but InfoNgen can aggregate content in any language. Yulia also introduces the Discovery Portal, Enterprise Knowledge Management Portal and Text Analytics Services. »
  Posted in: Knowledge management - Competitive intelligence - Regional sources - Social media sources
  
  
• What Affects the Adoption of New Technology?
  By James Mullan on Tuesday, 10th December 2013
  I read a lot of articles and blog posts about how successful some companies, including law firms, have been when implementing social and other technologies. But I also read a lot of tweets and posts from individuals, including intranet managers, who have been frustrated by the lack of adoption or engagement with their latest tool or application. There are a number of reasons why technologies aren't adopted, which has led me to believe that fear of change might be significant in blocking uptake of new software and services. »
  Posted in: Collaborative and social tools - Knowledge management - Intranets
  
  
• Source Update December 2013: What's Happening with Nexis?
  By Anne Jordan on Monday, 9th December 2013
  This month's additions and takedowns in Nexis, researched and compiled by Anne Jordan. »
  Posted in: News sources - Regional sources
  
  
• Co-Authoring in SharePoint 2013
  By Sarah Dillingham on Friday, 6th December 2013
  Sarah Dillingham outlines how co-authoring works in SharePoint 2013 and the benefits it offers. The organisational intranet software now offers real-time collaboration on the same Word, Excel or PowerPoint document; the authors can see one another's work and everyone knows who is working on the document. She provides tips to help users make the most of co-authoring and to work more productively with one another. »
  Posted in: Collaborative and social tools - Information services management - Intranets
  
  
• Supplier Selection Process: News Aggregation
  By Andrew Grave on Friday, 6th December 2013
  Andrew Grave outlines a framework for selecting your news supplier. He details the essential steps to take from planning the process to understanding the news aggregation process, users' needs and stakeholders' views on news aggregation. The article also demonstrates how Robin Neidorf's Art of Persuasion model can be applied to successfully engage stakeholders in your news aggregation project. »
  Posted in: Information purchasing - News sources
  
  
• Q&A with Attensa: Enabling Awareness & Knowledge Sharing
  By Sophie Alexander on Friday, 6th December 2013
  In her interview with Charlie Davidson, CEO of Attensa, Sophie Alexander finds out about the company's enterprise information and knowledge management tools including StreamServer, due to be reviewed again in 2014. He explains why Attensa is developing tools that can help better allocate attention through highly relevant personalised news and content streams, improve predictive delivery of high value information and help organisations to identify and access knowledge that exists within them to solve problems or innovate faster. »
  Posted in: Collaborative and social tools - Knowledge management - News sources
  
  
• Product Review of InfoNgen: Introduction, Value and FreePint's View
  By Yulia Aspinall on Thursday, 5th December 2013
  Yulia Aspinall reviews InfoNgen, a "discovery engine" which combines the ability to do metasearches of all or selected internal and external sources of information with flexible tagging and customer specific needs. The foundation of InfoNgen is an automated classification system that analyses unstructured content and organises it into a variety of taxonomies, making it easier to manage. The first part of her review introduces the product and offers feedback on the value and return on investment it offers. »
  Posted in: Information purchasing - Competitive intelligence - Content management - Workflow tools
  
  
• Source Update December 2013: What's Happening with ProQuest?
  By Anne Jordan on Thursday, 5th December 2013
  This month's additions and takedowns in ProQuest, researched and compiled by Anne Jordan. »
  Posted in: News sources - Regional sources

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